Tanzania Discovery Guide

Tanzania holds the two things most people picture when they think of East Africa, and both are worth the trip. The Serengeti is where the migration moves more than a million animals in a continuous circuit, and Kilimanjaro is the tallest free-standing mountain in the world, walkable without technical climbing. The Ngorongoro Crater is the third, a caldera twenty kilometres across holding some twenty-five thousand large animals. Then there is the other Tanzania -- Zanzibar's thousand-year-old Afro-Arab culture, and the vast, almost empty southern parks at Ruaha and Nyerere.

The main travel issue

The famous half is expensive and heavily booked: June to October is the main dry season and the migration window, park fees alone put safari beyond a budget trip, and camps in the north sell out far ahead.

The solution

Take January and February instead, the second dry window and calving season on the southern plains, and fly into Kilimanjaro for the northern circuit but Dar es Salaam for the south and the coast. The British advisory's only exclusion is a 20km band along the Mozambican border, far south of both safari circuits and of Zanzibar.

The classic northern circuit

Arusha, then Tarangire for elephants and baobabs, the Ngorongoro Crater for a day in the caldera, and three or four nights in the Serengeti positioned for wherever the migration is. Seven to ten days.

If you want fewer people

The southern and western parks. Nyerere — formerly the Selous — is one of the largest protected areas in Africa, with boat safaris on the Rufiji. Ruaha has enormous elephant numbers and very few vehicles. Katavi and Mahale, on Lake Tanganyika, are remote and expensive; Mahale has chimpanzees.

If you want to climb

Kilimanjaro at 5,895 metres needs no technical skill, six to nine days, and a licensed operator — independent climbing is prohibited. The Lemosho and Machame routes give better acclimatisation than the short Marangu; more days means a much better chance of the summit.

If you want the coast

Zanzibar for Stone Town, spice farms and beaches; Pemba for diving; Mafia for whale sharks between October and March; and Kilwa Kisiwani on the mainland coast, a UNESCO-listed ruined Swahili city almost nobody visits.

Tanzania has more than a hundred and twenty ethnic groups and, unusually for the region, almost no history of ethnic political conflict. That is not an accident.

Swahili as a national project

Julius Nyerere made Swahili the language of government and education after independence, deliberately, in preference to English or any single ethnic language. It worked: Tanzanians identify as Tanzanian first in a way that distinguishes the country sharply from several neighbours, and Swahili here is a genuine first language of public life rather than a lingua franca.

Ujamaa and Nyerere

Nyerere’s socialist villagisation policy failed economically and is discussed frankly, but he is revered as Mwalimu, the teacher, and for giving up power voluntarily in 1985 when almost nobody in the region did.

Courtesy and greeting

Greetings are extended and non-negotiable — a sequence of enquiries after health, family and work before any business. Shikamoo, said to an elder, receives marahaba. Skipping this is read as rudeness.

The coast and the mainland

Zanzibar has its own government, its own history as an Omani capital, a Muslim majority and a distinct identity, and the union with the mainland in 1964 remains politically sensitive there.

Park and conservation fees here are high and they are the point: they fund the protection of an enormous amount of land, and Tanzania protects roughly a third of its territory. Paying them without complaint is the baseline.

Vehicle crowding at migration river crossings is a real problem. Ask an operator about their policy before booking, and be willing to leave a sighting rather than join twenty vehicles at one.

The Maasai and the conservation areas are a live and uncomfortable question. Pastoralist communities have been moved out of protected land, including recently around Ngorongoro and Loliondo, and it is contested. Visit Maasai communities through arrangements your camp has a real relationship with, not a roadside stop, and be conscious of what you are looking at.

On Kilimanjaro, porter welfare is the issue. Use operators registered with the Kilimanjaro Porters Assistance Project, check load limits and pay the recommended tips — porters carry your trip and are the most exploited part of it.

On Zanzibar, dress modestly away from the beach and choose reef operators who use moorings.

June to October is the main dry season and the best general window: good game viewing as animals concentrate at water, comfortable temperatures, and the migration river crossings in the northern Serengeti usually between July and September.

January and February are the other dry window, and are better for one thing in particular — calving season on the southern Serengeti plains, when hundreds of thousands of wildebeest give birth within a few weeks and the predator action is extraordinary.

The long rains run roughly March to May: some camps close, tracks become difficult, prices drop sharply and the landscape is green. The short rains in November and early December are lighter and rarely disruptive.

Kilimanjaro is best climbed January to March and June to October; the rainy months make the route miserable and the summit views nonexistent.

Zanzibar is hot and humid year round, best from June to October and in January and February.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Relative cost across the country

Park fees, concession fees and the Ngorongoro crater fee are fixed and non-negotiable, and they dominate a safari budget regardless of where you sleep.